


Birds of a Feather

by Hayjake1



Series: Birds of a Feather [1]
Category: Being Human (US/Canada), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Possession, Alliances, Codes & Ciphers, Concerned Stiles Stilinski, Confused Scott, Crossover, Flashbacks, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Internal Conflict, Mastermind Lydia, McCall Pack, Mentioned Liam, Nogitsune Trauma, Pack Diplomacy, Pack in College, Past Abuse, Past Character Death, Protectiveness, Roommates, Suspicions, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-14 03:01:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5727244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hayjake1/pseuds/Hayjake1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Lydia is at M.I.T, and Scott and Stiles come to visit, only to meet Aidan, Josh, and Sally and become involved in their lives, for better or worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Impressions

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic on here so please be gentle. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Wolf nor Being Human, sadly.

_This is a bad idea,_ Josh thought. _I can’t do this_. He looked around at the young, oblivious students walking across the campus and was hit with such a sense of not belonging that he wanted to turn and run all the way back to the relative safety of the house. He was still convinced that going back to med school wasn’t the best plan, especially not now, but Nora insisted he at least go by and pick up some admissions paperwork. “You need to do more of what you want to do.” She would say. The truth was he wasn’t sure what he wanted anymore. It didn’t seem like anything he wanted was possible.

He’d been sitting on the bench in the heart of campus for almost a whole hour, trying to remember his life back when he had it all ahead of him, when he actually looked forward to walking this very campus as just another student. Safe, engaged, human. All things that felt distant and unnatural now. He was about to finally leave, to say screw it, when he saw a small group of kids at a picnic table close by. They had come along not too long ago and sat down, just some more people for him to envy, but soon he noticed they weren’t leaving. They had been sitting there about as long as he had, murmuring among themselves, and every now and then, he saw them look up at him. At this realization, he froze up, torn between leaving discretely or confronting them. He was torn from his dilemma abruptly.

“Josh! Come on, I know you hear me.” Sally was in front of him now, blocking his view of the kids. He shook himself out of his stupor and addressed the ghost in front of him.

“Sally? What are you doing here?”

She flopped down on the bench. “ I’m bored. Aidan and Nora are working and they said you’d be here. Zoe’s kinda been bumming me out, and my ghost friends aren’t the best conversationalists, so I figured I’d bug you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you listening? What’s up with you.” She asked.

“Those kids at that table have been watching me.”

“Those kids over there?” She pointed at the table.

“Yeah, I think they’re talking about me.”

Sally mused for a moment, then stood. “Well, I’ll go find out.” She said, striding towards their table before Josh could stop her. She took a seat next to the scrawnier boy, who was talking with rabid enthusiasm. Almost immediately, the other boy cut him off, turning to face her.

“I’m sorry, can we help you?” He said, attempting to sound casual.

It took a moment for Sally to process the initial shock of being seen. “You - You can see me?”

The other kid, a redheaded girl responded “Of course. And you are?”

The scrawny boy’s face was alert in confusion. “What’s going on? Who are you talking to?”

“Her.” The other boy gestured.

“Have you both lost your minds?” _Okay, so one human. But what does that make them?_ Sally wondered to herself. Suddenly the redhead reached out to touch her, and something like a spark ran throughout her non-existent body.

“Scott, she’s … dead.” The girl said, barely a whisper.

“ _She_ is sitting right here. And I prefer the term “non-living.” So what exactly are you then?” Sally said with a curious look.

The boy -Scott, she called him - leaned forward and his eyes glowed a burning red. “Someone who can help your friend.” He shrugged in Josh’s direction, where he still sat on the bench in obvious anticipation of something bad.

“How did you -” Sally drew back but the girl quickly beseeched her.

“Don’t go! Can you get your friend to come over here? We just want to help. Maybe it's better if we all explain everything to each other up front. I’m Lydia.”

The scrawny boy slammed his hand on the table in frustration.“Somebody better explain something! Are you two gonna stop screwing with me and go talk to the guy or not.” 

Scott just put his head in his hands while Lydia attempted to fill the boy in. _I do not envy her_ , Sally thought as she walked back to Josh, trying to think of the best way to convince him to talk with them. _On second thought, maybe she has the easy job._

* * *

 

Aiden came home ready to relax and have a drink after a long day of work. The three teenagers sprawled out in his living room quickly dashed that hope. “Josh!” He yelled, obviously upset with his roommate’s habit of picking up other pitiful souls. He knew instantly these three were a little more than human. The redhead smelled of death and something that he could only compare to rotting flowers, a sickly-sweet scent, and the house smelled even more like dog than it normally did. 

Josh rounded the corner from the kitchen obviously in a bad mood already. “Oh no, don’t look at me. This was all Sally’s idea.”

“Sally!” Aidan called, and she popped up behind him with a smile the size of the moon. “Who exactly are your… friends.” He smiled but shot her The Look, the condescending one that wordlessly scolded _we’ve talked about this before_. 

She wasted no time in introducing them with her usual enthusiasm. “This is Scott, Stiles, and Lydia. Guys, this is the other roommate I told you about, Aiden.” 

Scott smiled politely and pretended not to notice Lydia wince while Stiles took a moment to figure out why everyone had gone silent. 

Sally continued on “Now here this out. Me and Josh -”

“No, it was pretty much just you. ” Josh interrupted. 

“Fine. **I** thought maybe it could be good for all of us to talk. I mean, how perfect is this? Ghost and Banshee,” She gestured excitedly to Lydia, “ Werewolf and Werewolf,” Josh and Scott forced some eye contact, while Sally poured on “Vampire and …. well close enough.” She gestured at Stiles, who became very uncomfortable when he noticed everyone staring at him.

“Whats going on? Is the ghost talking about me?” He began pointing to random empty spaces. “That’s very rude, you know. Wherever you are.” 

While they argued over the value of the teenagers’ presence, Lydia slowly stepped onto the stairway, her eyes fixated on the ground as she was compelled forward, giving into the instinct that had been calling to her since she first entered the home. Cracks in the tile ran towards a small red mark that burned in her vision like staring into the sun. She started to shiver, and voices came to her, floating through time in some ghostly echo that rang in her ears. 

_ “I told you, it went down the drain!”  _

_ “Stop Lying!” _

_ Bum- Bump Crack!  _

_ “… Sally?” _

Lydia’s shuddered and she slowly backed into the corner, suddenly feeling so small and insignificant. She lifted her eyes and scanned out at the faces all staring at her with concern. Except Sally. Her eyes were full of understanding and what seemed like shame as she eyed the banshee. Lydia looked deep into those eyes and her veins turned to ice. She walked towards the ghost and attempted to hug her, only to be met with empty air. “I’m sorry.” Lydia softly whispered. 

After making sure the two girls were alright, Scott walked across the room to where Aiden and Stiles were sitting, and began to work out some plans with Stiles. “We may be staying in town a while longer than planned so don’t let me forget to ask Kira if she can take care of Liam on the full moon next week -”

“So you do know another wolf then?” Josh asked Scott.

Stiles interjected from the couch “Yeah, Liam. He’s Scott’s beta.”

“Scott’s what?” 

“Y’know, his beta.” Stiles reiterated. “Like, Scott turned him and now he’s the needy little tag-a-log.” 

“Stiles!” Lydia chided.

“Well it’s true!”

Josh’s head was whipping from Scott to Stiles fast enough to even make Sally dizzy. “Wait… you’ve turned someone too?”

“Yeah.” Scott awkwardly replied. “About a year ago.” He added with a casual tone that seemed more like he was telling them when he got a new car, rather than when he physically changed someone’s species. “He would have come with us, but he’s still a junior and he can’t afford to miss school. He’s doing good with training though. I think he could even go unchained next full moon.” He finished with a smug grin, as though he was telling them of a shih tzu he trained to dance.

“He’s only a kid…” Josh said with slow realization. 

“So are they.” Sally’s soft, sad voice said. “ Maybe you should calm down Josh.” She added, seeing quickly where this was headed.

“No, No, I won’t.” Josh was yelling now, and Stiles was trying to speak up for his friend but it all was drowned out as Josh bellowed on. “How can you just be so nonchalant about this? You ruined a kid’s life! Doesn’t that mean something to you?” All he could think of was Nora, the guilt that still haunted him. 

Scott was taken aback and fumbled at first to find his words. “ Of course it does. It was the hardest choice I’ve ever made but …”

“Choice! Not only do you not regret it, you deliberately changed ….” 

“He would have died otherwise!” Scott was yelling too now, not from anger but from desperation.

Josh stiffened at that, but his eyes still burned with rage, their usual gleam vanished. His next words were slow and deliberate. “So you sentenced him to this hell instead. Did you think you were being merciful? Things like us can’t be merciful! It just hurts people. We’re monsters!” 

Scott turned to leave, Stiles and Lydia going behind him despite Sally’s attempts to coax them back. Aiden didn’t move from his chair, just stared with both shock and concern. 

Scott turned back as he closed the door. “ Maybe,” he said. “but not all monsters do monstrous things.” 

Not long after they left, Sally vanished from the room with an angry huff and the whoosh of vapor dissipating. Only then did Aiden finally offer his advice. “You should've heard them out. They seem to have their shit together.”

Josh stopped pacing and faced his friend with disbelief in his eyes. “You’re kidding right? You heard them, they’re no different from Ray! Talking about packs and the Wolf being a gift. You didn’t even see them stalking me all day! The kid is demented!”

“He’s you!” Aiden snapped, knowing that if he didn’t stop Josh’s rant before it began, neither of them would get any peace. “He’s just like you! You think he was just changed and decided to make the best of it? No, he was probably just as scared as you were, so he found friends! He asked for help! That’s the only difference between the two of you. He ran for help while you ran away. He’s made mistakes, and so have you. If this is gonna work - living here - we all have to stop being afraid to ask each other for help. We’ve been thinking that to be normal we each have to keep all of these … problems… to ourselves. But they… Josh, they’re normal kids. Because they work together. They found a better way. Isn’t that why we moved here in the first place? To be normal? Maybe they can help us.”

Josh just stared, his emotions becoming too much to handle. He collapsed into the chair and resigned himself to defeat. “ This… this is not like you. Who are you and what have you done with Aiden?” A grin reappeared on his face as he surrendered to his friend’s logic.

Aiden laughed to see his friend relax, an increasingly rare sight, and said with a sigh “I just… I really think they could help us.” _You’re lying to yourself_ that little voice in his head said, sounding simultaneously like Bishop, Rebecca, and every other phantom of his past. _Sure, maybe they can help Josh and Nora, and maybe even Sally. But you? You’re already a lost cause._

“- Sally’s probably already talking to them. Maybe I should try to find Lydia on campus again tomorrow so - “ 

Josh droned on while Aiden nodded, absorbed in his own head. _Well,_ The darker voice buried in the recesses of his brain said, _If they can’t help, there are always … other uses for them._

* * *

 

Sally found herself on the street, just a few feet south of where she had planned to go. _Getting better_ she mentally praised herself. She started walking and reached the corner right as the three teens turned round it. Scott and Lydia stopped dead in their track while Stiles walked straight on past (technically through) her. 

He turned back to his friends as she reassembled into her usual visage. “ Hey guys, why are we stopping?” 

Lydia hardly batted an eye as she responded. “Because Sally’s here.” 

Stiles quickly began turning in circles in a futile effort to see a ball of light or spectral figure or something. Seeing a ghost was definitely on his bucket list. “Ugh what good is a ghost if it doesn’t even do any classic haunting stuff?” He froze after that and slowly turned to face his friends with wide eyes. “ Oh my god. Was that her?” 

“Was what her?” Lydia asked with clear annoyance. 

“I just felt this cold breeze, that’s her right? I’m sorry Sally! That classic haunting stuff is overrated anyway, right?” His eyes scanned the air again trying to determine where she was.

“Stiles, it is January in Boston, I’m pretty sure there can be a non-ghost related cold wind. Besides she’s between me and Scott, nowhere near you.” Lydia said.

“Oh” Stiles went quiet. 

Sally rolled her eyes and turned to the two who could actually see her. “Look, you guys can’t leave. Josh just … hasn’t had the best luck with other wolves. I promise, underneath the stress and sweater vests, he’s a puppy. We need your help. At least… I do.”

Scott paused for a moment before finally focusing on her. “Alright. We’ll come by the house again tomorrow, and try this again, I guess.”

Sally gave off a very unghostly squeal and jumped up and down. “Oh my god, thank you thank you thank you! I’ll talk to Josh and Aidan, I promise they’ll be way friendlier tomorrow. Josh can make lunch and oh my god we’re actually having new people over! Like actually living, non-psychotic people! Come by at noon!” With that, she vanished. 

“Okay, what the hell did you just get us into? I’m getting tired of listening to these one sided conversations.” Stiles said.

“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.” Scott offered, sounding unsure himself. The three of them walked on down the street, on the line between reality and shadows.


	2. The Proposal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the second chapter, hope you enjoy!

By the time Lydia did her hair and Stiles worked through mentally preparing himself, it was already 12:30, and they were quickly hustling along the sidewalk on their way to the unconventional lunch they had planned.  Scott wasn’t certain whether to expect a friendly celebration of new allies or a knife in his back, and his companions’ back-and-forth debate nagging in his ear was not helping to calm him.

“Not everyone wants to kill us, Stiles!” Lydia asserted.

“Okay, Not everyone per se, but they do! I saw it in their eyes! When a ghost invites you to lunch with an obviously unstable werewolf and brooding vampire, most people would say no!”

“Since when are we most people?”  Lydia retorted, her logic never failing.

Stiles pretended not to hear her and continued to restate his argument. “I’m telling you, It's a trap! I know you’re the death-detector, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” 

“And just why exactly would they attack us?” 

Stiles stared, seemingly dumbfounded by her question. “Are you kidding me? Gee i don’t know. Blood, power, territorial dispute, satanic ritual, showing up late… Literally anything else!” 

“Okay, how -” 

“Guys!” Scott stopped walking and interjected, ending the bickering. “We’re here.” Sure enough, the house stood just before them, the facade stained  dark by the secrets it held. 

All of them quietly moved forward, feet trudging up the staircase with slow, deliberate purpose. Even Stiles hushed in anticipation of their entrance. The three stood at the door for what felt like hours before Scott found himself knocking on the door. The idea of having such a meeting in an actual house as opposed to an abandoned mall or some condemned train depot had thrown him off. 

Aiden opened the door and, to the surprise of all the teens, smiled. “Hey, come in! We weren’t sure you guys were gonna make it.”  He quickly ushered them into the main room, where Sally was standing to welcome them. Josh stood in the kitchen archway, awkwardly avoiding eye contact. 

Scott relaxed upon the warm reception and nodded to the other roommates. “Yeah, sorry we’re late we got a little sidetracked. Hope it didn’t throw things off too much.”

“Food is all cold…” Josh grumbled, instantly drawing gazes from Aiden and Sally.

Aiden shrugged it off and went back to playing host. “Oh no, we understand. We’re just glad you’re here. All of us. In fact, Josh has something he wants to say about how he acted yesterday.” He said with a pointed glance and a scolding mother’s tone, his arms smugly crossed. “Don’t you, Josh?”

“Yeah. I think this is an awful idea.” The other man said with defiance. 

“I agree!” Stiles instantly proclaimed. “Now that that's settled, we’ll just go ahead and leave so -”

“No!” Scott said. “We came to talk, so let’s talk. I’m sorry if I upset anyone the other day, but we can help each other! And if not… then we leave and none of us have to see each other again.”

Aiden nodded. “Alright, let’s talk. Everyone wordlessly moved to the kitchen, where a place had been set for everyone, complete with a now cold meal. 

They talked at first about basic information - where they were from, how long Scott had been a werewolf, Lydia’s power, their friends back home - and then the roommates returned the favor, telling of Aidan’s position in the vampire community, Sally missing her door (Lydia sent Stiles a text of whatever Sally was saying so he could follow along), and even Josh discussed the attack that changed him and his attempts to rejoin the world of normalcy (he refused to talk about Nora in any context though). 

As they all finished their meal (except Sally of course, and Aidan, who had picked at his food just enough to give the impression of eating) the heavier question came out as Aidan cleared his throat. “So… what exactly do you want from us?” 

Lydia folded her arms and began with her usually dedication. She had gotten quite well at “pack business” as Stiles called it.  “Well, seeing how I am going to be in Boston alone once they go back home, it would be helpful to have … associates... to call whenever there is something not quite natural going on.”

Aidan looked her over “So you need protection?”

Her eyes flared a little but her diplomatic smile was unwavering. “Oh I have plenty of … protection.” She said with conviction, giving it the impression of being a threat. “What I need is convenience. Somewhere to lay low if things get too crazy, a way to keep informed, someone who can move the bodies if need be.” Sally snorted and laughed, but the teens’ faces remained grim.

“Wait,” The ghost started with some alarm. “You’re serious aren’t you?” 

Stiles phone chimed as he received notice of Sally’s concern from Scott, who had taken over transcribing once Lydia started her proposal. He read the text and turned his head towards the empty chair across from him, hoping the ghost was still sitting there and he wasn’t yet again making a fool of himself. “ Yeah, we are. We’ve actually got a guy for body removal but he’s back in Beacon Hills. Sooooo if a situation arises, there may be need for just a discrete relocation and anonymous call to the police. It tends to look bad when one girl finds another murder victim every month, and we don’t have the same kinda leverage with Boston PD that we do back home. Long story short - she screams, you listen.”  

The table grew silent as Josh and Sally sat in disbelief. Aidan appeared to be pondering the weight of the offer. “What’s in this for us?”

Lydia smiled -  not the phony business smile again but a real, teenage girl smile. “Well, obviously you would have access to all my … resources, at least while i’m here. We would be willing to extend access to some of our connections in California to you if you ever need them. And there is so much we can teach each other.”

“Like what?” Josh questioned, sarcasm heavily apparent.

“Control.” Scott answered. “You still don’t know how to control the change. I could tell as soon as I saw you yesterday. Please, let us help. I know, it’s harder for an omega but -”

Josh cut him off.  “No, see this is what I mean! All this alpha and omega business, I don’t need that in my life. I want to limit the influence this thing has on my life as much as possible, not join a social club for it.”

“I’m sorry to tell you this, but “this thing” is your life now. “it” is you. But it doesn’t have to be bad.” Scott pleaded.

Josh let out a sad laugh and shook his head. “Too many people have been hurt for this to be anything but bad.” He said, before leaving the table and walking straight out the door. Aidan moved to follow him, but to everyone’s surprise, Stiles jumped up.

“Let me try talking to him. I’ve gotten good at explaining this stuff.” Before anyone else could move, he was out the door as well. 

Aiden rose from the table and began to collect the dishes “Alright then. Maybe we should take advantage of the newfound quiet to discuss this arrangement. Scott, you want to help me with the dishes?”

So Scott and Aiden begin planning out the future cooperation of their groups while scrubbing plates, and the girls moved into the living room to celebrate their newfound friendship.

“Well,” Sally began with excitement once they had crashed into the couch, “Lydia, you know I’ll be happy to help you. Ghost and banshee, either way, dead girls stick together, right?” 

“Oh I’m not actually -”  _ She is bleeding, and she wants to scream but her entire body is frozen, and she hangs limp in his arms until she feels her back hit the gurney and the ambulance door close. Her dress is ripped to shreds, and if Jackson wasn’t the one next to her she would almost be embarrassed. The EMT is looking at the scratches and asking what happened. She want to tell him. How he- how it - attacked her on the field, how she lay there helpless until they found her, but thinking hurts too much and her vision is ebbing out. She thinks Jackson is shouting, and she figures it’s got to be at her, that she must have done something wrong. She should have run when she saw its eyes, before the claws hit her skin. She wants to apologize but the EMT interrupts her thoughts with his shouting that she is flatlining - that she is dying. The last thing she sees in the paddles, her eyes locking shut just before he yells “clear!” When she awakes it’s in the hospital, and she is screaming. She has been screaming ever since.  _

“...dead.” Lydia is noticeably shaking when she finishes her sentence and Sally thinks she may pass out.

* * *

Josh weaved in and out of the crowd of pedestrians on his way to his storage unit, desperate for a moment of quiet, a place he wouldn’t have to think about the disastrous decision of his roommates. He was waiting at the crosswalk, finally beginning to relax, when the kid practically tackled him from behind, pulling him to a side alley to talk. Much to Josh’s surprise, it wasn’t the wolf, but the other boy, Stiles. 

Stiles caught his breath and instantly began his tirade. “Okay, listen up! I don’t really like this anymore than you, but if we are going to do it, we  **all** are going to do it. I know you think this is all about you, that we’re recruiting or whatever the hell packs are supposed to do, but we don’t roll like that. You matter about this much -” He pressed his index finger towards his thumb to emphasis the scale. “- to us. This is about keeping everyone safe, and if Lydia even gets the slightest impression that you are anything but helpful, then there will be a problem. So I don’t care if you like us - I don’t like you - but you need to trust us. Trust Scott. I know him, and I know that he feels responsible for every freaking person he meets, and after that little .,. misunderstanding yesterday … he feels extra responsible for you. He has this need to be liked that I may not understand, but I know it is best to just give in and let him prove himself to you. You want to be left alone? That is the way to do it.” 

Being a little upset at having a teenager lecture him and feeling caged in the narrow alleyway, Josh lashed out. “He doesn’t want to help me, he wants to help the wolf!” 

Stiles actually rolled his eyes, whether in annoyance or hopelessness he couldn’t tell. “You are the wolf! This isn’t some split personality, it's your life. Scott can help you accept that, I’ve seen him do it.”

“He doesn’t understand!”

“Understand what?” Stiles questioned. “Understand living in fear that something inside you is trying to hurt people and you can’t stop it? That you’re not entirely sure you ever have complete control? That people… people are dead because of you. Because you were scared to ask for help.” Stiles backed up the wall and slowly slid down. “ … You’re not the only one going through hell.”

_ He hardly sleeps anymore. It still whispers to him, even though he knows it's gone. Buried. Buried like the bodies it left behind. He remembers though. Whenever Stiles closes his eyes, he sees bombs, feels electricity crackle, hears swords clashing together. In his dreams, he sees Allison fall while the Nogitsune laughs and sometimes he is laughing with it. Then her body changes and suddenly he is in the library standing over Donovan. He can’t wake up, so he just tells himself it's not the same, that Donovan had to die so he could live, that it doesn’t control him anymore. He thinks, it can not hide behind my face anymore. But sometimes… sometimes he can’t deny that it feels good having Donovan dead, having one less person chasing him in his nightmares. He smiles when he thinks that, and suddenly he's not so sure it can stay buried. Maybe some stains can’t be washed away. _

Stiles is pulled back into the present and wonders how long he zoned out. It must not have been long, because Josh doesn’t seem to have noticed. The man looks at him and Stiles sees such a familiar pain in his eyes that he gets chills. “Then what do I do?” He looked to Stiles, who was reminded of some much needed advice he once received.

“Keep going.” 

Josh looked down for a long moment, then took a deep breath and held out his hand without a word, helping the younger boy off the ground. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Three should be coming soon, Thanks for reading!


	3. The Plan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that the set-up is out of the way, I plan on giving each character a chapter to kinda explore their motivation and how they fit in with the plot. This is the primarily Lydia-centric chapter. Hope you enjoy!

Chapter 3: The Plan

“How did you find this place?” Scott said, awestruck by the sheer size of the warehouse Lydia had brought them too. The expansive space was entirely cleared, save for a desk covered with books, a laptop, and handwritten notes. The windows were all covered, and the back wall had been covered with several boards containing photos, maps of the city covered with pins, and pages torn from books or printed off various websites. Stiles ran over to examine them with a mixture of awe and envy. They were all well covered with post-it notes and scrawled words.

Lydia locked the door behind her and threw her bag onto the desk before answering. “Craigslist.” She turned to where Stiles was fiddling with her thumbtacked map. “Don’t touch that!” She yelled, making him jump back.

“Okay, but how did you afford it?” Scott asked, still puzzled.

“Oh, I didn’t buy it. The guy who was selling it thinks that I’m with the CDC. I said we were gonna have to temporarily quarantine the building on account of a subterranean spore-based pathogen and gave him some forged paperwork. He is expecting to get the place back at the end of the month with a clean bill of health. By then I’ll have moved everything to a new, more permanent  location and he’ll be none the wiser.”

Scott eyed her with suspicion. “That sounds incredibly illegal.”

“And genius!” Stiles added.

Lydia didn’t seem particularly concerned with their input as she went back to fixing the arrangement on her boards. She responded with a brief shrug. “It's not like I could look at this stuff in my dorm. My roommate already hates me because I took too much closet space, she’d probably kill me if I tacked photos of an exsanguinated corpse everywhere.”

Upon her conclusion, Scott and Stiles both shot up in alarm. “Hold on, did you say exsanguinated?” Scott asked.

“Yeah. Three bodies, three different nights.” She said, pointing to the pins on her map. “All different ages, but all of them were found in Cambridge. One by an early morning jogger, one by a bartender walking to his car after closing, and one by yours truly. Police think they were stabbed and bled out but… I took these pictures before I called the cops. Look, only one small wound on the wrist. That’s not from some kind of blade. And no blood pool near the body.” She took the picture down and passed it between them.

“Lydia … “ Scott carefully edged, “ is there a reason you waited to tell us this?”

Stiles jumped in far more aggressively. “Yeah, this would have been real helpful to know before we told a vampire exactly where to find us!”

She crossed her arms and took a firm stance. “Well, I don’t think Aidan is responsible. You’re being too suspicious.”

“How! How is that too suspicious! You are not being suspicious enough!” Stiles flailed violently while he shouted.

“It can’t be him, trust me I’ve -”

“How do you know! You aren’t -”

“Because I’ve been following him!” Lydia was growing irritated now, and when Scott opened his mouth to back up Stiles she stopped him with a single glare. Once both boys were silent, she continued. “After I found that girl, the cops made me go to the hospital to make sure I wasn’t in shock, and I saw him there. Something felt… off, so I came back the next day and followed him to his house. The trash was sitting out, so I took a peek. That’s where I found the blood bags. I thought he may have been the killer so I watched the house all night. The third girl died that night, but no one left the house the whole time. So I figured, if it’s not him, then he may lead us to him. I also found this in the trash.” She produced a paper from the desk drawer and thrust it to Stiles’ hands. It was confirmation of an admissions meeting at M.I.T. The meeting time was highlighted.

Scott quickly caught on. “That’s why you wanted us to meet in front of the admissions office instead of your dorm. You were gonna have us confront him.”

Lydia nodded. “I thought it would be Aidan showing up. When his roommate came, I figured we could tail him back to the house. I didn’t know he wasn’t human until your eyes went all alpha, and Sally was...  quite the surprise. That changed the plan. Now, we have actual allies who can help us find whoever is doing this. I knew you’d want to help them so I thought of the alliance proposal and decided it was the best course of action. I told you guys, I know how to take care of things here.”

Stiles paced while Scott sighed, “But why didn’t you tell us this before lunch yesterday?”

“Would you have let me make the deal if you knew? This way we were able to get a feel for them without any bias. I mean come on, do you really think those three could hurt anyone? They’re kinda clueless. Now we can actually help each other on this.”

Stiles shook his head. “This is completely -”

“She’s right, Stiles. This is the best way.”

“Well, I just think -”

The door opened as he was speaking, and Josh strode in with Sally behind. Both seemed somewhat wary of entering the warehouse.

“Speak of the devil.” Stiles proclaimed, only half joking.

Scott was far more excited by their arrival, and a dopey smile spread on his face. “Hey, glad you guys decided to come.”

“Where’s Aidan?” Lydia questioned.

Josh was too stunned at Lydia’s setup to response, so Sally turned to answer. “He forgot he had a shift today so he couldn’t make it.” 

Stiles leaned forward and whispered in Lydia’s ear in a taunting tone. “Suspicious.” She rolled her eyes and walked away.

 “How do you afford this place?” Josh said when he finally finished examining the space.

“Don’t ask.” Scott simply replied.

Sally let out a small shout from the end of the warehouse she had wandered off to. “Oh my god!” She was looking at the pictures hanging on Lydia’s crime wall. “Are these recent?”

Everyone migrated towards her and gathered around as Lydia recited the details of the case. She concluded with a direct appeal. “This is why we need you guys helping here. To stop things like this from happening.”

The two newcomers stood awkwardly, not sure how to react to the newfound role. Sally shifted between her two feet, and Josh sat biting his lip for quite some time before he stepped forward, tapping the photo.

“That is definitely vampire. They usually have a whole system for covering this stuff up, but things have been chaotic recently. One of the orphans must of done it, but Aidan does pretty good with keeping them in line. He might know which one could have done it.” Sally nodded in agreement.

“When is his shift over?” Scott asked.

“He should get off in an hour.” Josh responded.

Scott nodded and gave a small smile. “Great. Then that gives us an hour to kill.” He turned to Lydia.  “Why don’t you and Sally go meet him at the hospital while we ….” He pointed to Stiles and shot Josh an entirely too enthusiastic grin “ work on some training.”

Josh quickly drew up as if he was preparing to run, but slumped back down after Stiles shot him a firm glance. Sally was already halfway out the door, just excited to spend time with Lydia.

Once the two girls were gone, Stiles took the desk chair and rolled over to finish reading over the post-it notes on the wall and watch Scott channel his inner Derek.

“This is all about control,” The alpha started. “about finding an anchor to bring you back. You’ve got to keep your mind calm, and your heart rate under control.”

Stiles was trying not to laugh at Josh’s obvious level of discomfort. “ I vote we throw lacrosse balls at him. It worked for you!”

Scott shot the other boy a glare, then turned back to his reluctant protege. “Let’s get a sense of what we’re dealing with. Shift.”

It took a minute for Josh to understand what was happening, and even after he remained dumbfounded and had to ask for assurance. “I’m sorry? What do you mean?" 

“You know, shift! Change. Don’t worry I won’t let anything happen.”

Josh still seemed confused. “You may want to check your calendar. There’s still a week until the next full moon.”

Scott and Stiles shared a look, then Stiles took over the instructions. “Yeah, and? Just get angry! Pissed off, frustrated, aggravated, enraged. Hell even annoyed may work.”

“Oh trust me, I am plenty annoyed.”

Now it was Scott’s turn to look confused. “Do you not know what we’re talking about? Get your heart rate up. Y’know so you’ll shift.”

“What do you mean heart rate? I can’t shift until the moon! Shouldn’t you know that?”

Scott and Stiles looked at each other once again, this time with clear bewilderment. Josh sensed their confusion and confronted them. “Can you help me stop the shift or not?”

Both boys looked at him, and Stiles commented from his chair “Seems like you’re already well on your way.”

* * *

 

“Are you gonna tell me what happened yesterday?” Sally asked as soon as they were out of the warehouse on their way to the hospital.

Lydia attempted to play it off with a smile. “What do you mean?” 

“Really? You’re gonna act like you didn’t go catatonic yesterday? I mean you looked like … oh my god I can’t believe I almost said like you’d seen a ghost.” Sally couldn’t help but laugh, before taking a moment to compose herself and continuing with her conversation. “But something was up! Talk to me.”

They ducked into the subway entrance, Lydia carefully descending the stairway as she attempted to converse with Sally. “It was nothing. I just started thinking about … well, death. Kinda a recurring theme in my life. Just hoping to find some answers, I guess.”

“You seem like you’ve got most of it figured out. I mean, you’re managing college and apparently a murder investigation on top of being a banshee. It took me almost a year to be able to even move a pencil. I suck at being a ghost.”

“I’m sure -” Lydia began to talk before noticing that quite a few people waiting for the train were watching her. She pulled a knotted pair of headphones from her bag and put them in, carefully placing the microphone near her mouth before resuming in a softer voice. “I’m sure you’re doing fine. It took a full mental break, multiple attempts on my life, and some kind of possession for me to realize what I was. Still a little uncertain on the details.”

As the train rolled up and they boarded, Sally continued to press her. “Wait, possession? Is that what made you a banshee? Can it do that? Cause I have this friend Zoe who was -”

Lydia stared straight ahead and continued to talk into the mic to avoid more suspicious glances. She shook her head slightly though. “I’m pretty sure it’s genetic. I know my grandmother was one. The possession was just a … rude awakening. I don’t even know if that is what it was, it could have just been some kinda hypnotic suggestion or something. All I know is … his voice was in my head. He used me.” Her hand was gripping at her pants now, and Sally didn’t push her any farther, just left her alone with her thoughts until they reached their stop.

  
_Maybe it is genetic,_ Lydia thought, _but something triggered this, stopped it from lying dormant._ She kept recalling yesterday’s vision of the ambulance, the sirens drowning out her screams until everything went quiet and all the aftermath: Waking up in the hospital bed, cold and scared. Those nights she wandered the woods, not thinking, not feeling, just shambling forward like a corpse, desperate to find something. To find him. And then the party, the whole night that still felt like a dream. She had long ago forgiven herself for bringing him back, she had no choice. What still bothered her was the _how_ . _How did he do it? No, How did_ **_I_ ** _do it?_ She thought, suddenly feeling like the world around her was pulling away, like she was in a vacuum with nothing to tether her to reality. She turned to the ghost beside her, and the world rushed back into focus with a single thought slingshotting itself into Lydia’s head with it: _Could it be done again?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will focus on Aidan and will also feature Nora's first scene in the story, hopefully I will have it up soon! Feel free to comment with any questions, comments, or concerns!


	4. Disagreement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Scott and Stiles attempt to make sense of some strange behavior, tension rises between Lydia and Aidan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took longer than normal, just wanted to make super certain that everything made sense.

Aidan kept an eye on his phone throughout his shift, every minute he had free spent glued to its screen. He had only gotten the one message so far, but the lack of a follow-up had him concerned. He scrolled back through his recent messages, opening the text again. He had gotten it not quite an hour ago from Josh:

**Met with kids, they are investigating three vamp kills in Cambridge. Sally and Lydia on way to you w/questions. They mean business. What do we do?**

_ Just great,  _ Aidan thought. The only thing worse than some vampire leaving their kills for anyone in Boston to see was some teens with a morality complex getting involved in it.  _ Someone is gonna get hurt.  _ He had responded to the text as soon as he saw it, simply saying: 

**Tell them I will handle it. Change the subject and distract them.**

The message said “read” beneath it for nearly half an hour but Josh still hadn’t replied. Aidan chalked it up to him being occupied with the teens, and hoped they had all moved past the subject. He headed to the locker room to change out of his scrubs and head out, but as he rounded the corner he caught sight of the two girls, who unfortunately had also seen him. 

“Aidan!” Sally yelled and waved as Lydia meandered past the crowd in the hall. The redhead was fiddling with her necklace and looking on edge. Aidan noticed a thin red line around her throat, a relic of some past trauma. 

“Are you alright?” He asked as she drew closer. Her eyes were constantly scanning her surrounding and it took a moment for her to react to the question. 

“Hm? Oh, I’m fine. Just not a big fan of hospitals.” Her voice trailed off and she grew distant again until Sally cleared her throat and drew her attention back.

Once Lydia seemed at least somewhat lucid,  Sally began, “So we think one of your little orphan vampires may have gone off the wagon and we need your expert opinion. Any particularly shady ones come to mind?”

He motioned them into an empty room nearby and closed the door before replying. “Yeah, Josh let me know about that, but I guess he didn’t tell you… Look, I appreciate you bringing this up but you really don’t need to worry. I’ll deal with it, you should just focus on school. I’m sure you have a lot on your plate.”

Lydia clearly was not satisfied. “People are dying. This takes precedence. It's what we do, we find the solution, and now that we are working together, you don’t have to deal with this alone, that’s why we made a deal.”

“No, we made a deal so that we could share information and help keep each other off the radar. I didn’t agree to an audit of every death in Boston. Come on Lydia, we both know you’re not this naive. It’s a big city, people die everyday. Hell, people are killed everyday. You think you can help them all? Sometimes you have to take a step back, and just worry about yourself.” He looked at Sally now too and continued. “All of you need to realize you can’t stop everything bad from happening. You can’t stop all the evil out there. Especially when you’re a part of it.” He pushed past the girls and out of the room. He heard the clacking of Lydia's heels on the linoleum behind him.  _ She doesn't know when to drop it,  _ he thought. He turned and there she stood akimbo in the center of the hallway.

“Fine. You can deal with it your way. I’ll tell you where I found the body and you can take it from there. On one condition.” 

“And what is that?” 

“I'm coming with you. Wherever you go to take care of it, I'm coming too. I won't get in your way, you can do whatever you plan to do, but I will be there to observe. You’re right, I don’t know how things work in Boston, or with vampires. Show me.” 

Sally eased her way between them to attempt to dissuade the tension. She quietly began with a wary look in her eyes. “Lydia, maybe we should go back to the warehouse and try to help the guys? Before someone gets hurt, you know. I can go with Aidan later tonight, it’s safer that way. I- I can’t get hurt like you could.”

Aidan scoffed and leaned in close to the redhead, disregarding Sally. “I don't need a babysitter. And if you and your friends are so concerned, you probably shouldn't ask permission to spy on someone. Just for future reference.” 

“I didn’t.” Lydia said. “That’s why I know the first thing you’ll do when you leave is go to your house for a few minutes, probably just to feed on the bags you grabbed during your shift the other day. Then you’ll go to that hotel in the financial district and you’ll talk to someone there to fix this little problem. The solution will very likely involve a stake, and afterward you’ll go for a long walk until about midnight, at which point you’ll go home.” 

“Okay, that is creepy.” Sally remarked.

Aidan’s face was frozen somewhere between anger and surprise. “How do you know that? You’ve been following me?” He spoke it as a question, but his demeanor showed he just wanted a confession.

“Maybe.” She smiled as she turned to leave. “Like you said, I’m not that naive.” 

_ She’s resilient,  _ he thought,  _ and potentially dangerous _ . 

* * *

 

“That’s it, I give up.” Stiles proclaimed, closing the laptop.

“That’s the spirit.” Josh deadpanned, running his hand over his face. “Why are you doing this again?”

Scott stood hovering over his friend. “Come on, we’ve got to get it eventually! I mean what else could it be?”

Stiles jumped up from the chair in frustration. “I don’t know, Scott, why don’t you try? I’ve tried everything I can think of, and none of them are her password! This computer is better protected than the nuclear launch codes! I mean, she locked it in a safe last night! Who does that with a laptop?” 

“Which is exactly why we need to know what’s on it! Why would Lydia hide anything from us?”

Josh couldn’t help but laugh. “Maybe because she knew you would do a full search of her warehouse! Can we expect this treatment too? Cause I may have to tell Aidan to lock up our valuables.” 

Scott set the notebook he’d been pouring through down and sighed. “We’re just a little concerned. Besides, we need the computer to research your… problem.”

“And by research do you mean googling “werewolf performance issues? Seriously, how do you plan on researching this?”

“Don’t underestimate my researching abilities.” Stiles cautioned. 

Suddenly Josh’s phone began to vibrate, and upon seeing Aidan’s name on the screen, he moved off to the corner and answered. “Hey, I hope you’re having better luck today than me. Apparently, I’m a freak of nature in the werewolf community too. And I can’t believe I’m talking about a werewolf community now.”

“Josh, are you still with them?”

“Yeah, relax though I’m stepping outside. Sorry I didn’t respond but the girls had already left, and Scott made me put the phone away to focus on training.” He said softly as he stepped out and closed the door behind him. Aidan tried not to scoff at the idea of his roommate being ordered around by a teenager.

“I just met with the girls, Sally is here with me.”

“And Lydia?”

“She left, probably on her way to you. They’ve been watching us, Josh!”

“Yeah I know. Kinda how this whole thing started, remember? Them watching me. Very stalker-esque.”

“No, they’ve been watching all of us a lot longer than that. Lydia’s been following me for who knows how long.”

“Oh my god! These two aren’t much better, they’re spying on her! Maybe they really are crazy…”

“Sally is going back there in a minute, I’ve got to go deal with whoever did the Cambridge kills. Just wait there until Lydia gets back. We’ve got to sort this out.”

“Alright but -” Josh heard the click as Aidan hung up. He stepped back inside to find Sally had already popped back.

Scott turned toward him. “Was that Aidan?”

“Yeah, he said he’s gonna deal with the, um, situation.” Sally nodded to back him up.

“Alright well I just got off the phone with Lydia. She’s almost back, but she said she wants me to help her with some research at the library so we’re gonna head out again. Can you guys stay here with Stiles and work on the computer?”

Josh was about to protest but Sally cut him off. “Sure. Who knows, maybe Stiles can answer some questions for us.” She attempted to wink at Josh, but the only result was some strange twitchy look on her face.

All three of them looked at the boy currently making a slinky from post-it notes at the desk, oblivious to the ghost’s words.

“Sure.” Scott said. “One more thing, Lydia said she’s bringing someone here with her.”

“What, who! I thought you guys didn’t know anyone here.”

“I don’t know. She just said it’s someone she bumped into at the hospital. I think I hear them coming now.”

At that very moment, the door handle turned and Lydia came walking through, motioning for someone behind her to follow. Another woman entered after her, and Josh suddenly felt as if he was being choked. “Nora?” He yelled. 

She smiled and walked over to him. She was still in her scrubs, a jacket thrown over them to fend off the chill outside. He was still petrified as she embraced him, noticing his paranoia, and leaned in to whisper. “It’s fine. They’re here to help right?” Josh nodded slowly, despite his growing uncertainty. 

Lydia addressed him and Sally with a playful voice but eyes staring daggers. “ I can’t believe you guys didn’t invite her yesterday! We should all really get better acquainted. No more secrets.” She closed the door behind her, and locked it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter five should be up soon! Keep reading for some answers with what the heck is up with Lydia. Also next chapter will have more Nora! Hope you enjoy!


	5. Bad Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said this chapter would contain the big Lydia reveal, but I wanted to take a step back and take a look at the Being Human side of things. So without further ado, here is a little Nora-centric, reflective chapter.

To say Nora’s day was stressful would be a massive understatement. 

She hadn’t been able to sleep the night before, which of course led to her downing five cups of coffee before she even started this shift from Hell. Jittering and exhausted, she still managed to drag herself to the locker room and throw on the scrubs she forgot to wash. She had even forced on a happy face that was particularly convincing … until she looked at her calender and reality slapped it right off. One week until the full moon. 

The day dragged on after that, one whining patient at a time. She used to be able to be sympathetic, even comforting, but now every broken bone and high fever just seemed so insignificant. Bones mend, fevers break, and in a few years those people wouldn’t even remember that anything had been wrong. It was just “that week I was sick” or “the time I slipped on the stairs.” It took snapping at some old lady with a bad hip for her to realize she should probably get some air, take a few deep breaths, try to relax. She didn’t want to be another cliche - that bitter nurse everyone avoids. It was all she could do to put her head in her hands and not break down entirely in the middle of the cafeteria. 

“Nora, is everything alright?” 

She looked up, and saw Aidan eyeing her like a sick dog, something you didn’t know whether to pet or put out of its misery.  She shrugged. “No, I guess things aren’t. Just dealing with a lot right now.”

He sat down gingerly across from her. “Yeah, I bet. Do you want to, um, talk about it?” He muddled through the sentence like every word was unfamiliar, but she knew that was not true. she had seen him listen to people's’ problems everyday. Patients, Josh, Sally, he always listened. It was her that was unfamiliar. For the first time, she realized how little she knew about her boyfriend’s closest confidant. 

“I’m just not at my best. I’m being … cold, distant, frustrated. Everything that would piss me off sometimes about Josh before I knew the truth. And with the full moon coming, I - I just don’t know what's worse. The thing I become every month, or the thing I’ve become everyday. I knew that my life was going to change, but I didn’t think  **I** would change this much. Am I even still me?” 

She looked at Aidan, but he looked down, silence between them. Finally, he looked up and answered with a question of his own. “Have you talked to Josh?”

“About this? Are you kidding? He already hates himself because of what this curse has done to him, how do you think he’d take me validating all his fears? He’d either hate me for feeling this way or just blame himself more and I don’t know which of those I’m more afraid of.”

“First of all, Josh could never hate you. Or really anyone. You’re right, he blames himself, he does it for everything. This morning he apologized to Sally because he slipped on the stairs she died on and thought she might be offended. He has a lot of anger, he just thinks if he directs it at anyone -”

“He shows the world the monster. He lets it win.” Nora finished. 

“That’s what he thinks, anyway. What about you, though? What do you think?” 

“I just think …. there's gotta be someway to put this to use. Trying to pretend it's not there is not going to work.” She took a deep breath. “He told me about those kids. The ones that offered to help. He is with them now, isn’t he? I told him I thought maybe I should go too, but he got all frantic and left without telling me where they’re meeting. I want to meet them, Aidan. They’ve got to have some answers. Tell me where they are, please. I’ll tell Josh I followed him, he never has to know you told me.” 

“I would if I could except -”

“Except?”

“I don’t know where they are. I know it’s some warehouse but I don’t have the address, Lydia only sent it to Josh. He was supposed to send me it to me so I could head over there, but I got this text instead.” He showed her Josh’s message. 

“And? Is that supposed to be bad?” 

“It raises questions. Why would these kids be looking into this? And after they just happen to find us? No way it’s a coincidence.”

She shrugged. “Maybe they’re looking for answers too.” 

“Yeah, and who knows what kind of trouble they can get into in the process.” He checked his phone again, then began to rise. “My shift is ending, I gotta go deal with this. Talk to Josh, I’m sure you guys will get through this.” With that, he started heading off down the hall, while she sat and finished her coffee, musing over her options.

_ Alright, I’m going to call Josh and tell him I want to see them. Just take the phone, and call him. If he says no … well, I won’t let him. Just take the phone, and call.  _ She repeated it over and over in her head as she drew herself up from the chair and marched outside to make the call. She was already pulling him up in her contacts, staring at her phone screen, when she smacked into someone, dropping her phone and sending the petite girl she had bumped to her knees. 

“Oh wow, I am so sorry! I should have been paying attention. Are you alright?” Nora bent down to help the girl regain her balance, pulling her to her feet slowly.

“It’s fine, I wasn’t paying any attention either. Too caught up in my own head.” The girl tottered on her heels for a minute before steadying. “Oh here, you dropped this.” She grabbed the phone off the ground and held it out to Nora, before suddenly pulling it back to glance at the screen. Josh’s contact was still pulled up, and the girl tapped his photo in the corner when she re-extended her arm to give Nora the phone. “How do you know him?” 

Carefully taking back the phone, Nora looked the girl over real quick. She seemed fairly normal. Pretty, well-dressed, composed, but her gaze had a sharp, analytical character that betrayed her disguise of innocence. Still, she seemed more nervous than anything. “That is my boyfriend, Josh. Do you know him?”

The girl looked surprised at first, but then with a sudden flash of recognition she smiled and stepped closer. “Yes, I know him. I’m Lydia. And I think I may be able to help you.”

One train ride, a long walk, and a very ominous welcome later and here she was, locked in a warehouse with her fellow misfits by the Prom Queen of the Damned, who had God knows what planned. 

  
_ Yeah,  _ she thought,  _ stressful doesn’t begin to cover it. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will have plenty of answers, plenty of drama, and more of the characters you love. Hope you enjoyed!


	6. Decoded

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long but I really didn't want to rush it, plus I just started another fic called Being Parents so I've been juggling that and this. Anyway here is chapter 6!

“You owe us an explanation. Now.” Josh demanded as the redhead strolled in, her smile fading to a blank stare. “What are you hiding? I thought you wanted to help us, not lie to our faces!” 

“Hey, calm down!” Stiles demanded, striding across the room to stand by Lydia, but never taking his eyes off of Josh and Nora. 

Suddenly the room burst into utter cacophony as all hell broke loose and all everyone fought for their voice to be heard.

“Lydia, please just tell us -”

“Never should have trusted -”

“I’m going to find Aiden, just -”

“ Are you okay, what -” 

“Unlock the door, and we -” 

There was no more semblance of order. Scott and Stiles tagged behind Lydia, who drifted throughout the room immune to the chaos around her, both of them pleading for her to hear them. Josh banged on the door and pulled furiously at the handle, but it did not budge. Nora turned in circles to call out to Josh or Sally for answers, while the ghost attempted repeatedly to vanish from the room, failing in confusion until she saw the line of salt Lydia had laid in front of the doorway. Lydia drew closer to her desk, seemingly unaware of her friends attempts to communicate. She reached forward, pressing her hand to the surface of her laptop, still seated on the desk, and drew in a sharp breath. Then, cutting through the pandemonium around her, she screamed. 

Her shriek pierced the room uninterrupted, as all the other occupants clasped their hands to their ears, utter pain on their faces. Sally seemed to yell in return, but her shout was drowned out by the banshee’s scream, and suddenly the ghost dissipated. 

Finally, Lydia ceased screaming and began to claw at the mess of papers on the desk, seizing one in her hand and slowly backing away.

“Lydia? Lydia was is it? What’s wrong? Lydia!” Stiles and Scott held her steady as the former continued speaking to her and the latter searched her eyes for a sense of recognition. Wordlessly, she passed the paper into Stiles’ hands, and dropped to the ground.

“Lydia!” Scott yelled, and crouched beside the girl, who was now entirely unconscious. Nora wasted no time in taking her place alongside him, pressing her ear to the girl’s chest and grabbing her wrist.

“Her pulse is weak. Does this normally happen after she... “ She couldn’t quite think of the word to describe what she had just seen, but Scott understood her meaning. 

“No, no! She’s gone catatonic before, but that’s only when she’s been hurt. After she screams, she usually snaps out of the trance.” While the two boys continued to fret while Nora checked Lydia for any sign of injury, Josh recomposed himself and approached Scott, who was busy assisting Nora.

“What did she do to Sally?” He asked bluntly, staring fiercely into the alpha’s eyes. “Did she hurt her? What did she do?”

“Josh, now is not the time.” Nora didn’t look up, but continued shining her phone’s light into Lydia’s eyes, desperately seeking some response. 

“Like Hell it’s not! She has lied to us, spied on us, trapped us here, and now she, she - what, banished Sally? I’m calling Aidan, and if she is not up and giving us answers by the time he gets here, I swear -”

Stiles cut him off, flying at the older man with his finger pointing straight at his face, papers still balled in his hand. “Shut up! You seriously think we’re not freaking out enough? Shut up and help us help her!” The boy’s face was turning red with anger, and as the paper in his hand flew by his face, Josh’s eyes locked on the writing on the sheet.

“Give me that!” He wrestled the sheet from his hand and smoothed it out, all before Stiles could comprehend what happened, momentarily distracted from his argument by Scott setting Lydia down in the desk chair where she still slumped, unconscious. As he uselessly attempted to make sense of the cryptic writing, Josh was drawn back to the same words in the stylish yet hastily written handwriting that had originally grabbed his attention: his name. He read over the sheet, unsure how to follow the banshee’s methodology in her writing.

_ Josh Levison - conduit - (turn)? _

_ Nora Sergeant - conduit - (turn)? _

_ Aidan Waite - X - bfield _

_ Sally Malik - Boston Central Cemetery p#139 - stairway _

Those four lines stood in the center of the page, but they were far from alone. Nearly every other space on the paper was covered with the same nonsense:

_ (<3) /yyi /y [. ily tl[iy u]]/ _

He quickly thrust the sheet to Scott. “What does this mean, conduit? What did she write about us?” 

“Lydia wrote this?” Scott said with hesitation, as though he feared to believe it. He took the paper and fixated on it. “That’s not good.”

Nora left Lydia’s side to look as well, bringing the whole room into the conversation. “Do you know what it means?”

Scott and Stiles stared a look, with the latter taking the page and sighing deeply. “No clue. But she’s done this before. She goes into her trances and writes backwards messages or computer codes… usually it’s a warning or a call for help. Nothing good.”

“But this time she knew.” Scott said as he looked up with realization in his eyes. “She knew she wrote this, not like with the deadpool. That’s why she made sure we saw it, that’s why she got us all together. Maybe she needs us to figure it out…” 

Josh began panicking again. “Figure it out? You’re just as lost as we are! I thought you said she was the one who figured this stuff out. And- and none of this explains what happened to Sally, or her for that matter. Is she dead? She screamed, doesn’t that mean we’re gonna die?”

“She is not dead!” Stiles erupted in protest. “And that is not it works, we’re not gonna die, it just means… it means… something!” As he yelled, he grabbed a pencil from the desk and began underlining sections of her note. “Here - “p#139” that must mean plot number. Is that where Sally is buried?”

Nora looked at the section he pointed out and nodded. “Yeah, that’s it. How does Lydia know that? Does she want us to go there? And what about Aidan - what does the big X mean?” 

In the midst of the disorder, Scott had made his way to the laptop and brought it over to where they had clustered. “Look, we need to figure out what this repeated part means. It looks like keyboard keys, and she was trying to get to the laptop before she … passed out. We have to get into the computer, maybe there’s something there.”

Furiously shaking his head in frustration, Stiles countered. “How are we gonna do that Scott? I tried everything I could think of for a password. I mean, what does a banshee even use for a password? I tried Alliso - I mean, I tried … our friend’s name, like it was last time, and nothing.”

Nora hovered over him as he looked at the screen in desperation. “Why does the password have to be banshee-related. She’s still a teenage girl right? What do teenage girls make their passwords?”

“Oh my god…” Stiles sat up in astonishment and his fingers instantly scanned the keys, slowly hunting out their targets.  “Maybe its … p… r… a … d… a.” He hit enter, and suddenly the screen lit up. “That’s it! Her dog. It was the freaking dog’s name. How did I miss the most obvious password?” 

They all crowded around and stared at her desktop, which held only one icon: a word document entitled “<3”. 

“A heart? Really?” Josh scoffed, as they waited for the page to pull up. The page was covered with the same string of characters that had been scrawled on the paper, but in the middle of this one, there was another vague message.

_ I AM ORPHEUS _

_ AA {SM} LM : PH/ LM _

_ SM {JL}MS : N/MS _

_ WE CAN SAVE THEM  _

As Scott and Nora discussed who “them” could be and Josh harped on the ominous allusion, Stiles sat deep in thought, staring at the title of the page.  _ Why the heart? _ He looked back down at the string of text on the paper.

_ (<3) /yyi /y [. ily tl[iy u]]/ _

Seeing the matching heart symbol at the beginning and looking at the keyboard below him, a sudden idea hit him. “Guys, guys!” He yelled. “It’s not a heart! It’s the key!”

“What the hell is he talking about?” Josh muttered to Scott, who shrugged in response.

“It’s the key to the code! Using the keys! Computer keys! It’s not a heart, its instructions! Left three!” He set his finger on the / key. “See watch, you take the symbol it gives you then move left three keys! The first letter is an m!” 

Nora slowly blinked in disbelief. “Do all banshees use random codes or is she just extra paranoid?” Josh nodded agreement with her confusion, but the boys did not seem phased by the situation.

“Is that what it says? You’re certain?” Scott’s voice carried the full weight of the situation, but there was still a tinge of hope beneath the dire tone.

“Yeah, Scott. I’m sure.” Stiles responded, defeated. They all looked down at Stiles hasty translation.

_ Meet me in the white room _

* * *

 

Sally’s head was pounding. Lydia’s scream still rang in her ears, and her entire non-corporeal body somehow felt sore, as though whatever spiritual material that made up her being had been shattered by the sheer force of the yell. She remembered only hearing that sound, then her vision fading out. Now, as she returned to some form of consciousness, the pain remained. She realized almost immediately that she was no longer in the warehouse, having been reset to her death spot at the bottom of the stairs. She stood up and looked around, trying to see if she had found Aidan as she had planned, but he was nowhere to be seen. After a failed attempt to make herself appear in the warehouse, and another failure to appear at the hospital, she resigned herself to the old way of travel, stepping out the front door and preparing for a walk. Instead of the familiar street in front of her home though, as soon as she passed through the door she found herself in a wide corridor of solid white, an almost florescent glow over everything and an uncomfortable stillness all around. She turned back in concern, only to find the house gone, with no sign of the door she had just exited.  _ Great,  _ she thought,  _ where the hell am I? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So next chapter will be the finale! The rest of the code will be explained, questions will be answered, et cetera. I may do an epilogue though, and perhaps make a series of it if I get any more good ideas for this crossover verse. Hope you enjoyed!


	7. Orpheus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I quickly realized I would not be able to fit the whole conclusion in one chapter so there will be one more chapter after this.

Aidan reached the warehouse within minutes of  receiving a message from Josh, kicking down the door and taking stance for a fight. Instead, he found Scott and Stiles standing over Lydia, interrupted in their whispering, and Josh and Nora looking over scraps of paper and the laptop. All stood in alarm as he entered. 

“Finally, it’s about time! I said get here ASAP!” Josh said, rising to usher his friend in.

“What exactly is going on?” The vampire inquired.

Josh took a deep breath and began to explain. “Lydia broke down and went catatonic, we found some weird code she left saying to go to some white room, Sally disappeared and now we’re trying to figure out the other nonsense she left.” He turned the laptop screen to show Aidan the code.

_ I AM ORPHEUS _

_ AA {SM} LM : PH/ LM _

_ SM {JL}MS : N/MS _

_ WE CAN SAVE THEM  _

“Me and Nora think it’s initials but the layout is still strange. JL, thats me, SM is there twice so we figure Sally Malik and Scott McCall, LM is Lydia, and Stiles says the MS may be him. I guess the N is Nora but I don’t know why she wouldn’t have put an S too. We don’t know the AA or PH.” Josh explained.

Scott interjected “AA is … one of our friends.” His face grew weary at this comment and it was clear he didn’t understand why Lydia had written it. 

Nora joined them, carrying a small notepad that she had been using to write down their thoughts on the code. “What about PH? It’s linked with Lydia’s initials, just like the N with Stiles’. I don’t think the N is supposed to be me either. She wrote my full name on the other sheet, why just an N here?”

Stiles seized the notepad from her and began frantically writing. “You’re right, it’s not you. There’s a pattern here, Scott. Look!” He finished sloppily writing a translation and held it up to them.

_ Allison (deceased) {Scott (werewolf)} Lydia : Peter / (possessed) Lydia _

_ Sally (deceased) {Josh (werewolf)} Stiles : Nogitsune / (possessed) Stiles _

“What do Allison or Peter or the Nogitsune have to do with this?” Scott asked with clear concern. Aidan, Josh, and Nora sat bewildered as the two boys launched into a string of rapid communication..

“Scott, the whole thing isn’t a warning, its instructions! I think… I think she may be trying to recreate what happened with Peter and with the Nogitsune, but ….”

“...She’s trying to bring Allison back.” Scott finished as realization set in. “That’s what the first part meant. “I am Orpheus… She’s trying to bring her back. Can she do that? Is this really possible?”

Stiles nodded. “Well, she did it for Peter, and that was against her will. I think she needs the body though, that’s why she wrote down the location of Sally’s grave. Maybe she’s using her as a test case? If she is really trying this time… I don’t know if we can stop her.”

As he rambled, Nora turned and whispered to Josh and Aidan. “What are they talking about?” 

Josh just shrugged, but Aidan stared straight at the boys. “Nothing good.” He whispered back.

Scott stood dumbfounded, staring at Stiles. “What do you mean stop her? We can save them! That’s what she said! We’ve just got to figure out the instructions she left and we can bring her back! It is not too late to fix it!” 

“But look what it has done to Lydia, Scott! You remember what happened the last time we went to that white room, why would we go back? It’s too dangerous.”

Aidan spoke up from the sidelines, seemed to understand now the full gravity of the situation. “Listen to him, Scott. What you guys are talking about, it is not safe. This kind of stuff comes always with a cost.”

Scott shook his head violently. “You don’t know. I have to do this. I should have saved her last time.” The boy was almost in tears.

“Whatever Lydia thinks she can do, no matter how good her intentions… This is not saving your friend. Think of what you’re talking about doing. You’re going to rip this girl, rip Allison, out of wherever she is now and force her back here? Trust me, people aren’t meant to live twice. They become …”  _ Like me _ , the voice in his head said, but he caught it before he voiced it “ … monsters.” Aidan concluded. 

Scott remained distraught, but he seemed to comprehend, and submitted himself to their logic. “Then what do we do?”

Grabbing the notepad, Aidan turned to Stiles. “You said these are instructions. Do they say how to get to that white room you’re talking about?” 

The boy nodded. “I think so. We would need some supplies though.”

“Like?”

Stiles scanned the warehouse, then ran to retrieve two large metal tubs that Lydia apparently had tucked away in the corner. He set them down, then looked up. “Ice. We’ll need lots of ice.”

Aidan nodded, and Josh quickly stepped into the center of the room and threw up his hands in confusion. “Anyone gonna tell us what we’re doing?” 

Aidan patted his friend's shoulder and almost casually said “We’re gonna go find Lydia, and tell her to stop.”

“Oh okay.” Josh nodded, before he realized the unsatisfactory nature of the answer. “Wait what do you mean find her?”

* * *

 

Lydia felt the grass bend beneath her bare feet as she wandered onto the field. She could hear the distant sound of muffled music, and the cool breeze that blew through her hair carried the sharp smelling metallic twinge of blood. As she drew closer to the school, her legs began to tremble and she got within twenty feet of the door before her legs gave out.  _ No, this isn’t how it happened… _ she thought, all while crawling closer and closer to her goal. She heard the music on the other side stop, replaced only with sirens growing louder and louder as they approached. She reached up for the door handle, but gravity rebelled against her shaking hand, pushing it down before she could reach it. Laying there, she held back tears as she thought  _ I’m so close. I’m coming, please just let me in _ . Suddenly she heard the door open, but all she saw was the grass plastered to her dress by blood. 

“Lydia?”

_ This isn’t how it happened _ .

“Lydia are you alright?”

_ Take me in, I’ve got to get in. They’re going to be in there! _

“Lydia, talk to me!” She felt cold hands wrap around her waist and pull her up, her savior resting her against the door. “Come on, Lydia let’s get inside.”

_ Yes! Thank you, yes! _

She felt the cold melt away from her body as she passed through the door. The music filled, crowded, high school dance that should have logically been on the other side vanished, leaving only a white room of endless columns. Strength returned to Lydia, and she rose to her feet, any blood or grass that had been on her now vanished. 

“Lydia, what’s happening?” 

She turned to face her rescue, not hesitating to fling her arms around them. “Oh Sally, it worked! We made it!” 

Sally did not match her enthusiasm. “Lydia, where are we? Did you do this?”

Lydia spun around to check every angle of the room, an impossible task given its sheer size. She didn’t seem to hear her companion. “Come on Sally, we’ve got to find them! They should be here soon.” She began marching off, but Sally gripped her wrist and spun her around to face her. The ability to touch in this place appeared to be of great use to her.

“Lydia. What. Is. Happening!” The ghost yelled having lost all patience. 

The redhead composed herself before answering somewhat snidely “I’m gonna bring you back to life. Now, come on!” 

Sally stood in shock as everything sunk in.  _ And further down the rabbit hole we go _ , She thought before following her guide deeper into the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Stay tuned for the finale to see the "instructions" fully explained and whether or not Lydia goes through with her plan.


	8. Labyrinth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At long last the final chapter! Fair warning, this chapter gets somewhat emotional and features heavy depictions of grief. But all's well that ends well!

 

“Okay, can someone run me through this, because I’m not quite following.” Nora asked as Scott and Stiles filled the tubs with water. Stiles stopped and plainly explained:

“We need to get to the white room. To get there you have to be functionally dead. The ice water drops the heart rate… well it basically kills you. Don’t worry though, we’ve done this before. The problem will be finding Lydia and Sally.”

Aidan set down the bag of ice he had just carried in and turned to the two boys. “She told you to meet her there, won’t she be waiting?”

Before Stiles could respond, Scott cut in to clarify. “There’s not really a single meeting place or a map. There’s not even really a lay-out, its more like being … lost in your own head. Memories, fears, hope, all that stuff.” He still recalled his staged-death at the hospital, and the visions that accompanied.

“Well, that sounds sufficiently horrible.” Josh muttered in a strange combination of resignation and astonishment. “So _how_ are you going to find them?”

“You need something of theirs, right?” Aidan asked, his years of supernatural experience apparently having somewhat prepared him for this day.

Scott nodded. “Yeah. Do you have anything of Sally’s?”

“I grabbed this from the house when I went to get the ice. She mentioned being… connected with it once.” He pulled a small, sad ring from his pocket, and held it to the light. “What about Lydia? What are you taking for her?”

Stiles poured the last bag of ice into the metal bin and waited for the clatter of the cubes hitting the bottom before pulling out the folded paper of code and responding. “It’s all in the instructions.” He paused and looked at where Lydia still sat, unconscious, before turning back to the others. “We’re taking _her_.”

Nora and Josh both checked the girl’s breathing and listened intently as Stiles finally clarified by explaining the full methodology of the instructions. “Okay, there are two lines here. Both have the physically deceased i.e. Sally and Allison, listed first, and linked with Lydia and me, respectively, by the werewolves. The last part - about Peter and … so on - is an explanation. _Because_ Me and Lydia have both been possessed before, she’s planning to have us carry back the, the, I don’t know, ghosts? souls? The whatever. And then, using Josh and Scott as _conduits_ -” He switched papers now and pointed to the formerly enigmatic word - “they’d transfer the … whatever…  back into Sally and Allison’s bodies. Except, you know, we don’t have either of them but I’m guessing Lydia had a plan for that too. So now that we figured out the incredibly convoluted master plan, we can prevent it right? Just get Lydia and Sally and go.”

Scott spoke up, his eyes still haunted with sadness over accepting Death’s hold on Allison and seeing Lydia tormented by it as well. “I’m still confused about how you expect us to transfer anything. How am I a conduit?”

“That’s all that you’re confused about?” Josh commented.

Stiles addressed the question with a surprising level of patience. “Back in Sophomore year, when Lydia brought Peter back, she used Derek to do it. She had Peter in her head, telling her what to do, but she needed something to get him out of her mind and into his body so she used Derek, like when you linked Lydia’s mind to mine to take it back from that fox-spirit bastard.” Confusion spread to Nora’s face and she opened her mouth to voice this, but Stiles quickly dismissed her with “Don’t ask, long story. The point is, Scott, the claws - Derek’s and then yours - bridged the gap. _That_ is the conduit.”

Scott seemed to be understanding now, but Stiles provided a final summation of the procedure to be sure. “So, I go in one tub, we put Lydia in the other, and you do your claw mind meld thing on us while we’re under to tag along, and maybe then we can find Lydia and drag her back into consciousness like you guys did with me. Sally hitches a ride with me, and once we’re all awake, she vacates and goes back to being a non-possessing type of ghost. I’m gonna need her ring to track her down.”

“Please tell me we’re not about to do all this on account of it _maybe_ working.” Aidan said as a flighty look took over his face as he examined the ring. “I think I should be the one to bring Sally back. I’m already functionally dead, why not bypass the tub and claw-link me with Lydia? Let me get Sally, and Scott can get Lydia.” He shrugged as though it were common sense, but Scott immediately began to protest.

“No, we’ve done this before. And we don’t know how you being, you know, a vampire will factor in. Too many unknowns; we just can’t do it.”

“Actually it’s exactly what we’re going to do.” Stiles countered. Seeing Scott’s anger at being contradicted, he quickly added: “Not that I’m not going too. I’ll still be in the other tub, with Scott linking me to Lydia, but why put all our eggs in one basket? We’ve got two more conduits right here, one of them links Aidan to Lydia too and we all go in. Gotta have some back-up.”

Josh entered the debate now, his stress plainly evident. “Wait, Wait, Wait! No way. Like Scott said we don’t even know if Aidan can go in there, plus is it even safe for Lydia to be linked with more than one person, I mean that sounds a bit intense. And also, how do you expect us to be a _conduit_ when we have no idea how to do any of this!”

“Yeah, we haven’t exactly gotten to the advanced mental connection part of being werewolves yet.” Nora added in support.

Scott grinned in knowing that his version of the plan seemed to remain the course of action, but Stiles was quick to begin swaying Josh and Nora to his side. It all came down to one thing, which Stiles and Aidan had both already realized: If Scott really agreed with Lydia, and tried to help bring Allison back, Stiles alone couldn’t stop them; they would need to all be there. Once Stiles was able to communicate this without alerting Scott, Josh agreed to attempt linking Aidan and Lydia, while Nora watched over all of them. Having lost his allies, Scott was forced to agree to explain the procedure to Josh so they may all cross the threshold together. Soon, they were all in position, Lydia and Stiles lowered into the tubs and Aidan sitting nearby, Josh and Scott pressing their fingertips against the skin of their friends’ necks.

“Okay, just remember, it’s all about control. Stay calm, and just channel your energy to your fingers. Will them to change.” Scott said to his inexperienced partner in this endeavor. “I’ll count us down. 3 …”

_Control, just close your eyes and control._ Josh thought.

“2…”

_Come on, I can do this. I have to do this._

“1!”

_Here goes nothing!_  Josh thought, and soon he felt the sick thrill of his fingers digging into flesh. Then, it all went black.

* * *

 

Sally continued to follow Lydia, though she was quickly losing faith that the girl knew where she was going. “This place is a maze, Lydia, and it is like the walls are changing every time we turn away! Where are we even going?”

“We’ve got to find Stiles. He should be here by now. We need a door…”

“Story of my afterlife.” Sally muttered glumly. It felt like they had waited ages, but Lydia kept insisting their friends would come to bail them out. A long series of dark worst case scenarios had worked its way into her head, and just as she was preparing to tell Lydia just how futile this seemed, a small clatter drew her attention to her left, where out of the corner of her eye she saw something fall. Walking over, she found herself standing above the ring she had hoped to never see again. Her companion drew close to examine the unexpected appearance of the token as well.

“Sally, is that yours?”

“Not anymore.” She answered, knowing she wanted no more claim to it after all it had brought her.

“It must mean they’re here!” Lydia deduced with clear excitement. “Which means there should be - A-ha!” She pointed straight ahead from where the ring had landed, where a door had suddenly materialized.  Lydia walked forward and pressed her hand to the door, breathing deeply. Then, she screamed.

* * *

 

Stiles emerged in a tunnel of flashing lights filled with a terrible clanging sound. Like clockwork, the lights would flicker and he would be overtaken by shadows once again. _It’s only a memory,_ he told himself, recalling the familiar cacophony as the sound of his MRI two years ago. He pulled himself out of the machine, only to find himself in a dark basement instead of the sterile hospital expected. The shadow of an approaching figure was projected on the wall, the scrape of feet dragging on concrete joining the machine in the chaotic symphony of the room. Upon hearing the sound drawing closer, Stiles turned and looked for a way out. The only exit he saw was the long hallway that the shadow was lurking in, still getting closer. _Not again,_ he thought, squeezing his eyes shut, _it’s just a memory, it’s just a memory, it’s just_ -

Suddenly a shriek pierced through the noises of his prison, blaring forth from somewhere behind him. He opened his eyes and turned, only to see that where moments ago there had been only dark cement, there now stood a heavy metal door in the center of the wall. _Lydia!_ He thought, and charged forth to the door. He pulled back the heavy steel, squeezing through and pulled it shut behind him.

* * *

 

Aidan’s hand shot to his neck as a sharp pain crawled along his spine. For a moment it was all he could process, before he realized the cold stillness of the warehouse had been replaced with the feeling of harsh sunlight and a wind that carried the scent of blood and smoke. Everywhere he turned he saw bodies littering the ground, guns still clutched in their hands where they fell. Every face was familiar, but he was unable to recall the names, lost to time. His mind floated back to the actual day of the battle, when he had still fought for something other than himself. At once, a feeling of disgust so strong hit him that all he could think to do was lie down, take his rightful place with the other fallen men, and resign himself to spending an eternity in this strange, corrupted memory. He couldn’t escape his anger, his misery. He couldn’t change the past, so why not continue to live in it, become a specter of himself. As the storm of emotion finally began to overtake his mind, a greater force came forth to drive them back. A woman’s scream floated through the air, and as he turned to track it he saw a small house on the edge of the field, a cozy home where one would expect to find a happy family gathered around the hearth, kept warm by each other’s company even as the fire died down. He found his way to the door, and pushed his way inside …

* * *

 

From the moment Josh awoke, he had been running. Trees stretched on in every direction, and he ran between them, dodging the branches on the forest floor with unusual dexterity. The snarling coming from behind him drew closer and he urged himself forward to remain out of reach. At last he saw signs of civilization- a large, seemingly empty building in the distance. He sprinted into the building through a doorway knocked off its hinges, and found himself in its long, winding hallways. Sudden recognition struck him as he realized it was the halls of the hospital he had been working at for years now, though it had apparently fallen into disrepair. His relief was short-lived however, as the growls echoing down the hall informed him that he was still being chased. With the advantage of knowing the building’s layout, he was able to get to the basement unimpeded, though he now faced the predicament of being trapped down there with his pursuer on its way. A violent, almost pained, scream rang out.

_Oh no, it got someone!_ He thought as he attempted to block out the horrible wailing. The echos of the hallway made it impossible to place the sound, but as he turned in circles looking for it, he saw a familiar, rusted door at the edge of the hallway. Realizing where he was, he found himself dashing for the door, preparing to shut himself away to keep heavy door between him and it. He finally forced open the door and clambered inside.

* * *

 

Scott emerged from the haze of the ritual to find himself in his school’s library, dark and empty. He had expected Stiles and the others to be with him, but he found himself alone. Worrying that something may have happened, he quickly turned to leave and find them, but the moment he lifted his foot, he lost all balance and crashed into the nearest bookshelf, knocked it to the floor and collapsing into it. He began to pull himself up, and as his hand grabbed onto the rung of the knocked-over shelf, he saw “S.M.” printed on it. Two letters, and nothing else.

_Where is everyone else’s?_ He thought, scanning the entire shelf for any sign that other initials had once occupied it, but it was all blank. He attempted to stand again, but his chest grew tight and he found himself collapsing again. Lungs screaming, he gulped at the air but nothing could ease the growing tension. Coughing violently, he called for help, hoping to see Stiles come rushing around the corner with his inhaler, but no one came. He was alone.

After managing to get to his knees, his vision began to ebb away and he almost fell once more, but an ear-splitting yell rallied his will. Looking up, he saw a door set into the wall, it’s clouded window bearing the words : BEACON HILLS ANIMAL HOSPITAL. With one great lunge, he was able to push himself onto the door, swinging it open and drawing him in. Instantly, his breathing clear and he found himself in the white room, the others surrounding him.

“Scott, are you okay?” Stiles asked, helping him to his feet.

“Yeah, I’m fine now. You all made it?” He looked up and saw Stiles standing beside him while Josh, Aidan, and Sally talked in a huddle. Lydia was approaching him, a sad smile on her face.

She quickly began speaking, drawing back everyone’s attention. “I knew it would work! I’ll clear everything up in a minute, but right now we’ve got to go.”

“No, Lydia! We have to talk now! And where the hell are we gonna go anyway?” Stiles exclaimed.

“In there.” She said in a solemn voice as she pointed into the distance. A large, familiar gate now occupied the far wall of the room where she had indicated, leading out into what appeared to be a dark alleyway.

“You can’t go in there, Lydia. This can’t happen. It’s not safe.” Aidan scolded as he circled around to stand between her and the gate.

“No, Aidan, it’s okay!” Sally explained. “She’s going to fix me. She knows how to bring ghosts back, she’s gonna bring me and her friend! Isn’t that great!”

“Allison is not a ghost.” Scott said firmly. He avoided Lydia’s eyes, and stared at the ground as he slowly spoke up. “You can’t go through that door, Lydia.”

Sally stepped back, slowly working the pieces of the puzzle together in her head. “Wait… She’s not a ghost? Lydia, is that true? Because if that … if that is like, her _actual_ door … Then you can’t bring her back. She’s moved on.”

“No.” Lydia curtly replied. “Scott, what are you … we can, w-we have to … Stiles?” She looked between them for any sign of support, only to be met with sad, downcast looks. She grew mad, her anger hiding her tears. “Scott, you have to! How many times have you said no one else gets hurt?”

“I know, and Lydia I promise -”

“No! No more promises you can’t keep! What about all of our promises to her, don’t they mean something? It’s our fault she’s dead! I just … I want her back. I want all of us to be normal again.”

Josh realized just how much this girl was hurting, and shared a quick look with Sally. They both drew closer, taking her arms gently. He said softly, “Lydia, your friends are trying to help, let’s just take a deep breath and go back to talk about this.”

She stayed quiet, and then something came over her. She thrashed and sobbed out “No, No, NO!” before escaping their grip and throwing her arms around the gate, collapsing to her knees. The others had barely registered what had happened when she began shaking the gate violently, trying to force her way in. The last thing they heard before blacking out was her voice of sheer pain calling out “ALLISON!” and the clash of the gate swinging open.

* * *

 

_She hit send and put her phone back into her purse before turning back to her friend. “Allison, can we go now? It’s freezing out and your friend Stiles is waiting for us at Macy’s.”_

_The other girl laughed and just continued to string another arrow. “One more shot, then we’ll go. Don’t worry I’m sure the good dresses won’t get taken.” She drew back the string, and began lining up her shot._

_“Still don’t know why we’re doing this…” Lydia muttered through her chattering teeth. Allison’s phone vibrated from on top of her bag._

_“Can you check that for me?”  Allison said, not turning her focus away from the target._

_Picking up the phone, Lydia checked the screen. “It’s a message from your dad. And one from Scott. And look at that, one from Stiles - Do you ever check your messages?”_

_“Ha-ha.” She deadpanned, still not looking away. “Do me a favor and respond to them.”_

_“What should I say?"_

_“Just tell them I love them.”_

_Lydia paused, stricken by the odd nature of the message. “Wait, what? To all of them?”_

_“Well, you have to tell my dad -”_

_Lydia dropped the phone, her arms shaking from more than just the cold now. “What did you say?”_

_The girl still wouldn’t face her. “I said you have to tell my dad.”_

No, _Lydia thought,_ This has to be real, it has to be. _But she had now become aware of the familiarity of this moment._

_“Tell them I love them, Lydia.”_

Tell them yourself! _She wanted to yell, but she now saw how pointless it would be._

_“Just promise me you’ll tell them that.”_

_Lydia couldn’t stop the tears, but she smiled too, seeing her there with her bow, so content, before everything had gone so crazy for both of them. “I promise.” She said._

_Allison let the string go._

_Thwack!_

* * *

 

The sound rang in her head as she shot up, shivering and soaked to the bone. She began to climb from the tub, but before she even had one foot on the ground she was surrounded, a towel thrown around her shoulders.

“Lydia!” Stiles shouted as he pressed his wet body to hers in an embrace. “We thought you were stuck, you- you didn’t wake up with us. What happened, are you alright?”

She wrapped the towel tightly around herself while Nora pressed a heating pad onto her. She saw Josh and Aidan to her left with Sally, all holding their breath. Scott stood on her right, watching her carefully.

“Yeah…” She finally said. “I’m gonna be alright.” She walked closer to Scott, who still looked heartbroken. “I’m so sorry for what I said. I know you miss her too, I just …”

“It’s alright. I understand Lydia.” He pulled her in and held her.

“She loves you so much.” Lydia whispered.

He didn’t show any signs of surprise, just held her a little closer and smiled. “She loves you too.”

* * *

 

“Thanks for the ride!” Scott said as he pulled the suitcase from the trunk. Josh got out and helped fetch the other bags, while Aidan told Stiles how to find the terminal once they entered the airport. Lydia emerged from the backseat just as Sally materialized on the sidewalk.

“Don’t mention it.” Josh said as he handed a dufflebag to Scott. They stood there awkwardly for a moment, before Josh finally broke the silence. “So… about this whole pack situation-”

“It is all taken care of.” Scott said with a dopey smile. “We’re brothers now.”

“Well, that’s… unsettling. But helpful, I guess.”

Scott laughed. “Don’t worry man, you’re gonna get the hang of this real soon. I can tell.” He grew a little more concerned in his tone soon after that though. “Hey, keep an eye on her, alright?”

Josh nodded. “We take care of our own.” They shared a quick nod, and joined the others.

“Aww, I’m gonna miss you guys.” Sally said before attempting an awkward air-hug.

Lydia laughed. “Sally said she’ll miss you, Stiles.”

“I’ll miss you too, Casper.” Stiles said. Sally stuck her tongue out in response. Lydia stepped forward, hugging the both of them. “I wish we could stay a little longer.” Stiles began, but she shook her head.

“You guys have classes starting soon, you’ve got to get back. I’ll be fine. Tell everyone I miss them. I’ll try to call at least once a week, and I’m coming home at Thanksgiving.”

“Alright, take care Lydia. I’m sure you can’t get into nearly as much trouble here as you would back in Beacon Hills.” Scott half-joked.

Lydia smiled and nodded to her new found entourage of Aidan, Josh, and Sally. “I don’t know, the four of us in a city this big, I bet we’ll get into all kinds of worse stuff than you guys will.”

“Is that a challenge?” Stiles asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Guess you’ll have to wait and see. Now go before you miss your flight!”

  
They hugged one last time, before Scott and Stiles walked through the door to the airport and Lydia climbed back into the car, sad to see her friends go, but proud to know they had all made it this far together, and eager to see what else could unfold with her new friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Depending on feedback I may make a follow-up story to examine the whole dynamic of the these characters interacting. Let me know what you think!


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